writer, editor, modernist, and geek

HOW TO FAIL AS A WRITER

Stop trying to improve. Focus on racking up publication credits, or sales, or reprints, rather than whether this story is noticeably better than the last one.

Refuse to listen when your writing is criticized, regardless of the quality or thoroughness of the critique or review. Only listen to your fans, the people who tell you how great you are, and suspect — quietly, to yourself, or loud and indignantly to your loved ones — that your critics just didn’t “understand” what you were “going for”.

Stop sending your writing out for feedback (either to alpha/beta readers before you consider it done, or publishers afterward).

Stop trying new things, whether it’s different genres, different styles, different markets, or different character types.

Complain, constantly, that your work isn’t selling enough. Post on social media that people you know, your friends and family, “clearly” don’t love you enough because they’re not forcing your work on enough people. Publicly dismiss or insult markets or editors who rejected your writing, regardless of why. Insist that your kind of writing — novels, short stories, genre, stories with a certain kind of characters, whatever — must not be marketable anymore, since you’re not profiting enough from it.

Tell yourself you’re a failure, every day, regardless of what anyone else says about your work. Use your certainty that you’ll never be any good as an excuse to take out your sad/bad/angry feelings on the people who care about you most.

Ignore your editors, rebel angrily against them, argue with every suggestion, or decide that okay fine, this one change you’ll make and then never submit to their market again.

Be desperately impatient. Demand respect, sales, an answer to every email you send a prospective editor… if you think you need it, expect to get it immediately.